Django {% url %} tag for the currently rendering view

Question

I'm developing a website that lets the user read books, displayed in different ways. For example, I have the following URLs:

• /read_in_white/book_name/chapter_number - Shows white pages

• /read_in_pink/book_name/chapter_number - Shows pink pages

  My view functions are read_in_white(request, book_name, chapter_number) and read_in_pink(request, book_name, chapter_number)

  At first I only had read_in_white, which showed white pages. It also had some paging controls in a Bootstrap navbar. These were all located in the read_in_white.html template, which included controls for navigating for a different book or chapter. For example, I had the following in the template:

  <a href="{% url "app.views.read_in_white" book='Good Book' chapter=1 %}"/>

  Now I want to add the read_in_pink view and template. The navigation part of read_in_pink will be almost identical to the one in read_in_white, with one difference:

  <a href="{% url "app.views.read_in_pink" book='Good Book' chapter=1"/>

  I want to move all the navigation to a base template, but I can't figure out what to put in the (% url %} tag. How do I find the current view's name? I know I can add it to the context, or I can change book and chapter to be query parameters so the URL is /read_in_pink?book=...&chapter=..., but I was hoping there was something as simple as {% url this_view ... %}.

  Is there?

Answer 1

No, there is not, since that would introduce a very stronger coupling between view and template and that's usually a bad idea.

But this sounds like you want to parameterize the color, doesn't it? Then you can pass the color to the navigation or wherever you want to.

def read_in_color(request, color, book, chapter):
    if color == "white":
        return render_to_response("whitetemplate")
    if color == "pink":
        return render_to_response("pinktemplate")

Then in your templates

{% url "app.views.read_in_color" color="pink" book="Good Book" chapter=1 %}